


One year later

by o0Anapher0o



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Jack's journey, Post-Divorce, introspection through talking to strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0Anapher0o/pseuds/o0Anapher0o
Summary: While Jack is coming after Phryne he deals with a particular anniversary on his own but finds a sympathetic ear in one of his travel companions.
Relationships: past Jack Robinson/Rosie Sanderson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	One year later

**Author's Note:**

> It seems I still haven’t quite gotten Jack and Rosie out of my system yet.  
> In my mind their divorce (and Guy’s engagement party) took place on the 17th of December. That would give everybody a bit of time to recuperate before Phryne’s birthday.  
> Unbeta’d.

The ship was never as quiet as in an early morning when they were lying in a port. Neither the crew nor the passengers were awake yet, since they weren’t going to sail out until the tide turned in their favour some time before noon. Even the engines were silent for the moment.  
Lady Jane found she liked it. Maybe not as much as the knowledge that they would arrive in Southampton, their final destination, in less than two days, but Bordeaux as nice enough in the darkness before dawn.  
Lady Jane didn’t like ships. It was the reason she had spent more than half of her long life in Jaipur, happily away from everything nautical. But her grandson was getting married in London in January so there was nothing to it. Her seasickness had mercifully subsided after the first week, except for that dreadful storm before Yemen, but she still didn’t like being boxed in like a fish in a tin and never got used to the constant light swaying. It would have been too much to say it kept her from sleeping but it made lying in bed rather uncomfortable. So she had taken to roaming ship in the early mornings and she enjoyed having the place for herself for once.  
That way it came as a bit of a surprise to find someone sitting in the lounge at this time. A tall, lean man in a suit sat hunched on one of the chairs in the dark. He was fiddling with something small that would occasionally catch the dim light from the window as he spun it between his large, restless fingers. Lady Jane smiled to herself. She had come to like Jack Robinson on this journey. Unobtrusive man, kept out of other people’s business and bothered no one with his own. But he had helped Mrs Morgan when she had lost her antique rosary and she didn’t even have to ask. A bit silly of her to take that thing on a sea voyage, but he had found it before she could even properly wipe away her tears.  
Yes, she liked him. He reminded her of Arthur’s youngest, what was his name? Oh yes, little Eddie. His mother thought he was a moody child, because he spent a lot of time in his own head and didn’t run around breaking things like the other boys. Stupid hag that one, never did notice he was a clever lad and just how sharply he observed everything around him.  
She walked over and sat down next to her fellow passenger.  
“Now what business do you have being up at 5 in the morning?” she asked amicably.  
He took a moment to come back from wherever he had been off to and turned to look at her.  
“I could ask you the same.” he stated, not unfriendly.  
She shrugged. “I’m an old woman. I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead. You on the other hand…” she gave him an appraising look, leaving the sentence hanging meaningfully.  
“I just couldn’t sleep.” he conceded.  
“Anniversary coming up?” she asked with a pointed look at the wedding band he was still toying with.  
He tilted his head a little. “Of sorts.”  
She kept looking at him until he faltered.

The old Lady kept staring at him, willing him to keep talking. Jack recognised an interrogation tactic when he saw one, but found he was rather defenceless against it none the less in his current state of mind.  
“I’m divorced one year today.” he admitted.  
Lady Jane kept quiet, waiting for him to go on.  
“It was one of the worst days of my life, but now I can’t help thinking it might have been the best thing that ever happened to me.”  
To his surprise the old Lady huffed a laugh: “I had that day.”  
He raised an inquisitive eyebrow.  
“The day my first daughter was born.” she explained with an amused twinkle in her eyes, “Sixteen hours of labour in the middle of a heat wave.” she shuddered at the memory. “Nothing but trouble, girls.” she muttered. Then she gave him an almost naughty wink. “But I’d guess you know all about that, Mr Robinson.”  
He was glad for the darkness that hid his blush both about her insinuation and the shame he felt when she so firmly put his pain into perspective. His divorce with Rosie had after all been perfectly amicable, even if he had felt a dreadful failure that day.

“How long were you married?” Lady Jane asked after a moment.  
“16 years.” he replied without hesitation.  
It still sounded odd to him that it should have been that long. It had been but the fact was that between the war and Rosie moving out they had spend more time apart than together. Factually his marriage had lasted more like a bit over five years, emotionally less than six months from their wedding day to that first day in the trenches that had changed him forever.  
“That’s not too bad.” the old Lady decreed.  
He had to suppress a smirk at her judgement. Lady Jane was one of the more entertaining passengers on the ship and he found that enjoyed her candour sometimes. Apparently she was as old as the Himalayas and from what he had gathered she had buried at least two husbands. She had most certainly sired more children and grandchildren than Jack could keep track of, all of which she seemed to regard with a kind of benevolent disdain.  
“But if it was the best thing that could have happened, why are you sitting here brooding this time of the morning?” she asked frankly.  
“It was the best thing that could have happened to _me.”_ he emphasised.  
The woman nodded sagely. “She saw it differently?”  
“Not at the time.” he disagreed.  
And then he found himself telling her what had been on his mind when she arrived, surprising himself a little. He didn’t make a habit of confessing to more or less strangers about the unexpected ways his life had gone, yet in this moment, protected from her eyes by the darkness, much too tired to over-think it, he did.  
“I would have never asked her.” he stated certain of himself, “I would have been miserable, but I would have stuck to my vows. The divorce was her idea. She wanted to get married again. To be honest it was probably his idea. They got engaged a few weeks after.”  
Lady Jane made a face. “Must have stung.” she commented.  
“It didn’t.” he said dismissively. It was the truth. Rosie’s engagement had left him feeling a little wistful, but at that point he had already been far too tangled up in the web of a certain honourable Miss and it hadn’t hurt him the way he would have expected. But that wasn’t the point he was trying to make at the moment.  
“As it turned out her fiancé was a criminal and to make things worse he was conspiring with her father.” Jack summed the situation up as concisely as he could, unwilling to linger on the atrocities Fletcher and Sanderson had been guilty of. It was another thing he didn’t want to talk or think about right now.  
“So what I can’t stop thinking about is that she was the one brave enough to go through with it, to demand more from life than I was giving her. I was the coward who would have stuck it out, making both of us miserable in the process.  
“And now a year later she had to leave her home in a scandal and live under an assumed name after she lost her fiancé and her father on the same day. She was betrayed like no one ever should be and I… I could be happy.” he finished simply. “It’s like a damned morality play. Pardon me.”  
Lady Jane didn’t seem in the least bothered by his language. She just shrugged. “Sometimes life can be a right old beast.” she agreed. There was no judgement in her statement, only hard won experience. Jack found he was surprisingly grateful for that.  
Then she tilted her head inquiringly at him.  
“You _could_ be happy?”  
This time Jack made no attempt at hiding his smile.  
“The odds are good, but the jury is still out.” he offered.  
The older woman grinned wickedly back at him. “Two more days?” she asked.  
“Two more days.” he confirmed.


End file.
